My submission for the Blastwave FX scare challenge

BlastwaveFinal03

The song I wrote for the Iphone game Fishing for Words

Fishing for Words Title Song

My name is Craig Deskins and I am a sound designer/musician in Chicago IL.  I have created a post-apocalyptic landscape set in a large city hit by an extremely deadly and contagious virus.  First I started this project by listening to the already submitted audio files for this category and I listened to what had been created thus far.  I then researched the type the atmosphere that I wanted to achieve.  I watched videos and examined pictures of Chernobyl and cities that have been hit hard by the recession and I took that information and compiled a list of sounds and descriptive words that would guide me in the creation of this environment.  I do the majority of my sound creation in Logic Pro so I started off with making the wind and the rustling paper there as a base for the rest of the sounds.  I mixed in debris and rubble, as well as trash into the gusts of wind to try and achieve a feeling of desolation.  I topped it off with creaking metal sounds to imply that the buildings and skyscrapers were beginning to fall under their own weight.  I then took all of the stems into Pro Tools where I created my final mix.  I am passionate about sound because of the profound influence it has had on my life, and my dependency on it as an art and a means to fully express my emotions.  It is my source of income, my greatest source of networking, and my favorite past time.  I am forever linked to the creation of sound whether I like it or not.  I believe sound design for visual media is the career for me because it is already my career.  I have already dedicated thousands of hours of work into becoming the best sound artist I can, and I am hoping that VFS can guide me along the path to to becoming a major contributor to the art of Sound Design, Film, Video Games, and Music

VFS SoundCloud Full Scholarship Challenge 2011: A post-apocalyptic landscape_CraigDeskins

My name is Craig Deskins and I am a sound designer/musician in Chicago IL.  In this track I created an imaginary animal being born.  My imaginary animal is a herd animal from a foreign planet.  It is reptilian in nature, and resides in dense forest areas close to fresh water. I started this project differently than I usually do.  I started off recording different vocalizations until I found a sound that was unique and interesting to work with.  Once I found this base sound I began recording the adult vocalizations of the imaginary animal.  I found it easier to work backwards like this when creating the newborns sounds since I had a point of reference.  Once I had a few minutes of the adult vocalizations completed, I began pitch dropping and modulating the track to make it sound less human and more alien.  In Logic there is a plugin that allows you to pitch shift a track but still maintain the original sound by controlling the mix level.  I used this plugin as well to give the sound a more throaty quality.  I then stripped the silence from the recordings and layered the track regions to make it seem like there were dozens of these animals.  I added subtle grunts and breaths to give them more life and then I automated the pitch of the track to give the sound more variety.  I then moved on to the ambience.  I used recording of birds and jungles and pitch shifted, modulated, and equalized them to try to make them sound as foreign as possible.  I found that using a frequency oscillator helped me achieve this best.  I also chose to mix in a river to give the mix a more detailed location.  Next part I worked on was the cracking of the egg.  i went to the grocery store and bought a half dozen eggs and recorded myself cracking them with my Zoom H4.  I took the recordings of this and position them to achieve a climax in the breaking of the egg.  I have recording of fruits and vegetables being stabbed squashed etc.. so I mixed those into the egg opening to give the sound a more organic, life like quality.  i then went back to recording the newborn animal where I basically just experimented with different vocalizations within the range of the adult vocal behaviors.  I then used pitch shifting and layering of sounds to make it sound as visceral as possible.  I used a low pass sweep as the animal is beginning to break out of the egg to signify that its cries are being muffled by the thickness of the shell. I used more fruit stabs and mixed them to sound like the animal was walking with the goopiness of the inner shell still sticking to its body and slopping off as it barks to the adults for food.  I wanted to create an environment around the animal being born to give it a unique emotional connection.  I want the listener to feel like they are in the wild watching this newborn hatch from its shell right before their very eyes.  I used Logic Pro for all of my sound creation and I exported the stems of my mix into Pro Tools where I created my final mix.  I find the equalizers and volume controls in Pro Tools to be more towards my liking.  I am passionate about sound because of the profound influence it has had on my life, and my dependency on it as an art and a means to fully express my emotions. It is my source of income, my greatest source of networking, and my favorite past time. I am forever linked to the creation of sound whether I like it or not. I believe sound design for visual media is the career for me because it is already my career. I have already dedicated thousands of hours of work into becoming the best sound artist I can, and I am hoping that VFS can guide me along the path to to becoming a major contributor to the art of Sound Design, Film, Video Games, and Music

VFS SoundCloud Full Scholarship Challenge 2011: An imaginary animal being born_CraigDeskins

My name is Craig Deskins and I am a sound designer/musician in Chicago IL. In this track I created my interpretation of falling in love. Every time I have fallen in love, I have found myself attached to a song or collection of songs that are forever linked to that relationship. That is why for this track I chose to create a scenario where a listener is driving his car on a rainy night. He is falling in love with a women and is breezing through the radio channels looking for something he can relate to. He finds himself stumbling onto a radio station where a guest appearance by Dr. Love is taking place. As the song begins, the windshield wipers, rain and applause all fuse together with the song as the listeners mind drifts and this experience becomes linked to the women he is falling in love with. I started this track with an idea that I was going to some how use music in an interesting way to get my interpretation of falling in love across to listeners. I decided that I would use a radio based theme which gave me a lot of room to explore different directions. I began creating the radio intro and messing with different sound files that I had to give it an old radio sound. I used various statics and radio sources. I then recorded my voice and equalized it so that the vocal frequency ranges were boosted with a high-pass and low-pass filter on as well. This gives the voice the effect that it sounds like it coming from a radio. I then thought it would be a good idea to have the location be in a car and on top of that have it raining. Rain signifies reflectance and the birth of something, and I thought it would fit nicely with the atmosphere I was setting. I always like to give as much depth as I can too location to give the listener as much opportunity for visual detail as possible. I want people to feel like they're in the passengers seat. I then began creating the song. I DJ weddings and I always like the weddings where they want me to play the Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Dean Martin music because it has a lot of emotion in it, and I can always see that emotion rub off on the guests. this is why I chose to create a jazz like composition. I started off playing with a harp synthesizer to create a foundation of the melody. I then used a grand piano synth and built chords around the harp. I went back to the harp and restructured the melody to give it more character and dynamic. I then inserted a bass line and used a brush drum kit synth to finish it off. I then created a buss where I sent every track through equalizers reverbs and compressors. I then recorded the vocals(badly haha) and added a reverb to it to make it sound like a concert hall. My last addition was creating the frequency crossfades during the song to give the effect that the listener felt like he was there and that this song was having a profound effect on him. I did this by doubling up the tracks and adding an equalizer on one similar to what I did with the announcers voice. I then automated the volumes of the tracks so that they would bleed into each other seamlessly. I added a high pass sweep of air during this with a microphaser plugin, and added a hint of wind chimes to give it a dreamy feeling. I then sent all of the stems into Pro Tools where I created my final mixI am passionate about sound because of the profound influence it has had on my life, and my dependency on it as an art and a means to fully express my emotions. It is my source of income, my greatest source of networking, and my favorite past time. I am forever linked to the creation of sound whether I like it or not. I believe sound design for visual media is the career for me because it is already my career. I have already dedicated thousands of hours of work into becoming the best sound artist I can, and I am hoping that VFS can guide me along the path to to becoming a major contributor to the art of Sound Design, Film, Video Games, and Music

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